Synthetic Landau levels for photons
Open accessAbstract
Synthetic photonic materials are an emerging platform for exploring the interface between microscopic quantum dynamics and macroscopic material properties. Photons experiencing a Lorentz force develop handedness, providing opportunities to study quantum Hall physics and topological quantum science. Here we present an experimental realization of a magnetic field for continuum photons. We trap optical photons in a multimode ring resonator to make a two-dimensional gas of massive bosons, and then employ a non-planar geometry to induce an image rotation on each round-trip. This results in photonic Coriolis/Lorentz and centrifugal forces and so realizes the Fock–Darwin Hamiltonian for photons in a magnetic field and harmonic trap. Using spatial- and energy-resolved spectroscopy, we track the resulting photonic eigenstates as radial trapping is reduced, finally observing a photonic Landau level at degeneracy. To circumvent the challenge of trap instability at the centrifugal limit, we constrain the photons to move on a cone. Spectroscopic probes demonstrate flat space (zero curvature) away from the cone tip. At the cone tip, we observe that spatial curvature increases the local density of states, and we measure fractional state number excess consistent with the Wen–Zee theory, providing an experimental test of this theory of electrons in both a magnetic field and curved space. This work opens the door to exploration of the interplay of geometry and topology, and in conjunction with Rydberg electromagnetically induced transparency, enables studies of photonic fractional quantum Hall fluids and direct detection of anyons.
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A closely related experiment has been explored: strong interactions between photons are obtained by coupling light to optically dressed atoms in a Rydberg-EIT configuration, and a synthetic magnetic field in a cylindrically symmetric geometry is obtained by using a twisted optical ring-cavity.
“A closely related idea has been experimentally explored in a recent experiment [152]: strong interactions between photons are obtained by coupling light to optically dressed atoms in a Rydberg-EIT configuration [31,153]; a synthetic magnetic field in a cylindrically symmetric geometry is obtained by using a twisted optical ring-cavity [154].”
From How to exploit driving and dissipation to stabilize and manipulate quantum many-body states (2025) · cites this paper as [154]
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References 56 · Cited by 222
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- Authors
- Schine, N., Ryou, A., Gromov, A., Sommer, A., & Simon, J.
- Affiliations
- University of Chicago (US)
- Corresponding author
- Simon, Jonathan
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2016-06-08
- Volume
- 534
- Issue
- 7609
- Pages
- 671-675
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W2262065934
- Cited by
- 222
- References
- 56
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 24 · 2021: 20 · 2020: 21 · 2019: 27 · 2018: 27 · 2017: 29 · 2016: 12 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 14.97
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- arxiv.org
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Funders
- U.S. Department of Energy
- National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate
- Army Research Office
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Topological Materials and Phenomena
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Strong Light-Matter Interactions
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Quantum Mechanics and Non-Hermitian Physics
- Keywords
- synthetic magnetic field, Coriolis force, Lorentz force, ring resonator, cone geometry, spatial curvature, fractional quantum Hall effect, topological photonics, Rydberg electromagnetically induced transparency
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